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04-08-2013, 01:18
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#91
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Switzerland
Boat: So many boats to choose from. Would prefer something that is not an AWB, and that is beachable...
Posts: 1,324
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Re: Dust Off Your Sextants! GPS Hacked!
Quote:
Originally Posted by hellosailor
But all of that is nothing new or different. Even in the 1950's the US used to print and distribute guidebooks for "freedom fighters" teaching them how easy it was to disrupt a modern regime, in order to overthrow it. Some of the fringe printing companies still reprint and sell that stuff, so the knowledge is out there before and beyond the internet.
Look at the northeast blackout of 2003. Three days (contrary to news reports saying less) without power in major areas, all because a tree limb wasn't trimmed. Supposedly. One tree limb? Modern societies are easily disrupted, with major consequences. Hardening the systems is terribly expensive. So, we ignore, and pretend, and take great comfort in the fact that the bad guys are usually just too dumb to figure it out. Usually--but like roaches, they're persistent.
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That fact that books exists describing something as easy doesn't make it easy. I personally think that disrupting Western civilisation is easy. If it were easy it would happen all the time. The fact that we are here, that our complex society keeps functioning nevertheless, proves beyond doubt that it is very resilient.
If one tree limb is enough to cause a blackout across the whole Northeast that area would be in the dark permanently. The fact that the Northeast is not in the dark permanently does prove that the electricity grid there is quite robust. Maybe not as robust as you want it to be, but certainly robust enough to allow that part of the US to function and prosper.
You can have theories about what is easy, and what is hard, what is probable, and what is improbable.
Or you can just look at the facts. See how often something is done. If it's not done often, it's hard. If it is done often it's easy.
So:
Toppling Western Civilization: Hard.
Crossing the Atlantic in an AWB: Easy.
Quote:
Going back to GPS, I don't think your school was extracting much from the encrypted military GPS signals. More likely that unknown to you, they had applied for a permit to actually receive them.
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I know what we were doing. We were not extracting anything from the signals. We were using GPS for surveying purposes, not dynamic real time navigation. What we did was put receivers out there, at different position, and just leave them in place for some time, recording the P code from just one single satellite as it passed overhead. By then correlating the recorded signals using software afterwards on a computer we could calculate relative positions of all the receivers to a couple of millimetres. And we didn't even need to know the orbital parameters of the satellites. (In fact, that is how the actual orbital parameters are derived...)
GPS receivers in boats of course work very differently...
Quote:
Anyone, even private individuals, was allowed to apply for those permits if they could show a need for the high-precision (non-diddled) signals. Today, with WAAS and DGPS, you'd be hard pressed to justify the permit but AFAIK the systems are still the same, and even a new military GPS signal would be easily spoofed (or buried) by simply putting up a local GPS-type transmitter.
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The difference between the military signal and the civilian one is that the military keeps the algorithm used to generate the pseudo random code secret, and the code itself only repeats in about 30 days. That is why spoofing it is hard...
Quote:
Heck, you could buy the jammers on ebay, truckers were using them so their operators couldn't ell when someone was goofing off with the company truck. The FCC just put the squeeze on eBay to stop those sales this year. Cell phone jammers, too.
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Jamming is not the same as spoofing...
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04-08-2013, 05:07
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#92
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Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2010
Posts: 2,909
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Re: Dust Off Your Sextants! GPS Hacked!
Quote:
Originally Posted by K_V_B
Jamming is not the same as spoofing...
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It can be. I used to do it as one of the jobs I did for a living. Google "Stingray" and "cell phone".
I think most people would be shocked at what can be done these days, and what is routinely done, these days.
Ten years ago, even the word "stingray" was classified where I worked. Now, it's in newspapers. What does that tell you? (Something better replaced it.)
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04-08-2013, 05:14
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#93
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Nearly an old salt
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Lefkas Marina ,Greece
Boat: Bavaria 36
Posts: 22,801
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Quote:
Originally Posted by K_V_B
That fact that books exists describing something as easy doesn't make it easy. I personally think that disrupting Western civilisation is easy. If it were easy it would happen all the time. The fact that we are here, that our complex society keeps functioning nevertheless, proves beyond doubt that it is very resilient.
If one tree limb is enough to cause a blackout across the whole Northeast that area would be in the dark permanently. The fact that the Northeast is not in the dark permanently does prove that the electricity grid there is quite robust. Maybe not as robust as you want it to be, but certainly robust enough to allow that part of the US to function and prosper.
You can have theories about what is easy, and what is hard, what is probable, and what is improbable.
Or you can just look at the facts. See how often something is done. If it's not done often, it's hard. If it is done often it's easy.
So:
Toppling Western Civilization: Hard.
Crossing the Atlantic in an AWB: Easy.
I know what we were doing. We were not extracting anything from the signals. We were using GPS for surveying purposes, not dynamic real time navigation. What we did was put receivers out there, at different position, and just leave them in place for some time, recording the P code from just one single satellite as it passed overhead. By then correlating the recorded signals using software afterwards on a computer we could calculate relative positions of all the receivers to a couple of millimetres. And we didn't even need to know the orbital parameters of the satellites. (In fact, that is how the actual orbital parameters are derived...)
GPS receivers in boats of course work very differently...
The difference between the military signal and the civilian one is that the military keeps the algorithm used to generate the pseudo random code secret, and the code itself only repeats in about 30 days. That is why spoofing it is hard...
Jamming is not the same as spoofing...
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Real time kinematics , used in marine satellite compasses works like you said.
Dave
__________________
Interested in smart boat technology, networking and all things tech
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04-08-2013, 10:46
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#94
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֍֎֍֎֍֎֍֎֍֎
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 15,136
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Re: Dust Off Your Sextants! GPS Hacked!
Jim-
I was once surprised to see the Goodyear Blimp, up close and personal following a country road when thunderstorms had brought the ceiling down to nowhere. Yes, IFR.
KVB-
I didn't suggest it was easy to topple western civilization, but it IS easy to massively disrupt a society or state. "If it's not done often, it's hard. " Not necessarily. We don't see much of that behavior because there is little advantage to anyone in doing it, and the folks who want to do it (i.e. jihadis) frankly are all emotion and near zero brain, so they have problems doing it.
Tom Clancy wrote a bestseller, which played again as a movie, and it still took over a decade before the jihadis got the notion to use a jetliner as a huge bomb, because folks said "Oh, that could never happen." Well...Of course that's why folks also say the same thing about the 2003 blackout, that (one untrimmed tree limb) could never take out 1/4 of the US for three days. Shut down the entire transit systems, offices, food distribution, everything. Of course, the 1966 blackout did a good job too, and after 9/11 the DOE got a tiny bit smarter, you can't just go online and find maps of the internet backbone, or the power grids, so easily anymore. Entire web sites (including some from the DOE) dedicated to demolition tools and similar topics have also been taken down--because the threat is real enough to those who are in the business.
There are published papers, from attendees of some of the various war colleges, on the threats of dirty bombs and the problem that there is no real defense, there is no real evacuation, there is no real recovery. Manhattan, DC, other valuable real estate, may simply need to be abandoned for 100 years if someone gets clever and lucky--just once. I suspect these things have not happened because even the jihadis have heard of Pearl Harbor, and they've got some grasp of what "Clobbering Time" might mean.
Jamming isn't spoofing, no, and there's a difference between making an aircraft lose guidance and tricking it into the wrong flight path. But either one could cause a major disruption. Let's segue to 2019 in a US where the aircraft industry has successfully lobbied to have GPS-guided routing and each aircraft is following a nice tightly packed flight path with GPS. I could set up one spoofing transmitter outside LAX or in DC and bring down one heavy in the streets. OK, maybe two before they got the rest to abort landing. But what would happen if some innocent gizmo on dozens or hundreds of aircraft, like a cheap cell phone, happened to turn itself on and transmit a GPS scrambling signal? Ooops, they'd have to reroute everyone in the air, and you just know what a goatfest [forum's pg13 language rule] that would become? You think someone somewhere wouldn't land safely?
The point is, we are vulnerable in so many ways. To ignore that because we haven't been attacked much or often, is just reinforcing the dog-and-pony show while the dangers build.
Can GPS go out, or be taken out? Yes. Major consequence? Dunno, maybe a couple million Garmins will all chant "recalculating" at the same time. Boats? Thank god, our navs don't say that!
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04-08-2013, 11:00
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#95
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Nearly an old salt
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Lefkas Marina ,Greece
Boat: Bavaria 36
Posts: 22,801
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Hellosailor, your post is classic fear mongering.
As GNSS. becomes increasingly part of our lives, the systems are being duplicated and backed up. We have cell tower , we have eLoran in Europe As well as several GNSS systems.
Did you know all iPhones from 4 on read and decode GLONASS.
IF a conflict re moves all sat based systems , I think well have way more things on our mind then knowing our gps location
Suggesting that GPS spoofing or jamming would bring down GPS guided planes is nonsense , a software beginner could write the protection logic to handle that.
Lets stay real and leave the fear mongering to the politicians
Dave
__________________
Interested in smart boat technology, networking and all things tech
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04-08-2013, 11:11
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#96
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֍֎֍֎֍֎֍֎֍֎
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 15,136
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Re: Dust Off Your Sextants! GPS Hacked!
"Suggesting that GPS spoofing or jamming would bring down GPS guided planes is nonsense"
Right, Dave. Except I didn't suggest that it would, only that it could. And there's a small but important difference between fear mongering and understanding potential risks. Is it fear mongering to suggest that offshore sailors carry a VHF, a life raft, or an EPIRB? It is, after all, highly unlikely they'll ever need one. Or be saved by having a PFD on board, much less by wearing it.
And yes, somehow, only a rare few people call it fear mongering to suggest one might consider obtaining these things.
You may remember, I'm the one who said GPS spoofing is likely to wind up with an antiradiation missile coming down at the spoofer, that it isn't a very advisable long-term project, even if it is easy to do. Once.
You sound just like the folks who said Tom Clancy's premise was Hollywood nonsense. "Ooops."
By all means, dismiss the risk simply because the odds against it are long.
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04-08-2013, 12:20
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#97
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Armchair Bucketeer
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 10,012
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Re: Dust Off Your Sextants! GPS Hacked!
The next big threat will be super swarms of bio-mechanical insects (mini / nano drones) that can cross continents and oceans using prevailing winds......either carrying Bio or Chemical weapons or simply radiation....don't have to destroy an area physically to disrupt it, the inhabitants will do that.
and built primarily using 3D printers (apart from the bio bits ), by non state groups.
Am always amazed at how little imagination the baddies have .
You heard it here first. Well, after Facebook.......
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05-08-2013, 00:01
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#98
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Switzerland
Boat: So many boats to choose from. Would prefer something that is not an AWB, and that is beachable...
Posts: 1,324
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Re: Dust Off Your Sextants! GPS Hacked!
Quote:
Originally Posted by goboatingnow
Real time kinematics , used in marine satellite compasses works like you said.
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Yes. And we have compact fast processors to thank for that. In 1993 we often needed hours of computing to do what now can indeed be done in real time.
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05-08-2013, 00:10
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#99
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Switzerland
Boat: So many boats to choose from. Would prefer something that is not an AWB, and that is beachable...
Posts: 1,324
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Re: Dust Off Your Sextants! GPS Hacked!
Quote:
Originally Posted by hellosailor
Tom Clancy wrote a bestseller, which played again as a movie, and it still took over a decade before the jihadis got the notion to use a jetliner as a huge bomb, because folks said "Oh, that could never happen."
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Indeed. That is because 9/11 needed quite a bit of luck on the side of the Jihadis to actually happen.
I stand by my point. If X is easy, we should see more X. If we don't see a lot of X this proves that X is not easy.
Quote:
Well...Of course that's why folks also say the same thing about the 2003 blackout, that (one untrimmed tree limb) could never take out 1/4 of the US for three days. Shut down the entire transit systems, offices, food distribution, everything.
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It's not an untrimmed tree limb that causes a blackout. It is always a combination of factors, of which one can be an untrimmed tree limb.
The fact that an untrimmed tree limb was a factor in the 2003 blackout, does not mean that the grid is extremely vulnerable. We can observe that the grid is not that vulnerable, because blackouts of that size are rare.
Quote:
Manhattan, DC, other valuable real estate, may simply need to be abandoned for 100 years if someone gets clever and lucky--just once.
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No. This is nonsense. Witness Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were bombed by something that is much worse than a "dirty bomb". Two days later the trams and buses were running again... They were certainly not evacuated for 100 years.
Making Manhattan uninhabitable for 100 years using a "dirty bomb" is physically impossible. Just do the math. A dirty bomb will be a nuisance, more because of it's psychological effect than the fact we then must clean up a few blocks. But it will not make a large city inhabitable. If Enola Gay couldn't achive that, a van with some explosive an some polonium won't either.
Quote:
The point is, we are vulnerable in so many ways. To ignore that because we haven't been attacked much or often, is just reinforcing the dog-and-pony show while the dangers build.
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The point is, we are very resilient. The fact that we are here discussing this proves it.
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05-08-2013, 00:17
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#100
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Switzerland
Boat: So many boats to choose from. Would prefer something that is not an AWB, and that is beachable...
Posts: 1,324
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Re: Dust Off Your Sextants! GPS Hacked!
Quote:
Originally Posted by hellosailor
By all means, dismiss the risk simply because the odds against it are long.
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Risk management is about what is probably, not about what is possible.
Anything is possible. A meteor may strike your boat. What is your plan for that? You say you shouldn't dismiss it because the odds against it are long...
9/11 was highly improbable. It still is. So we shouldn't worry to much about preventing the next 9/11 (the TSA has probably killed more people then died in 9/11).
It's not because one can come up with a scenario that ends in disaster that you should prepare for it. Probabilities do matter. Holywood plots don't.
So we put an EPIRB on our yachts, because we know the probability that we might need one signifies it's cost. We don't build boats that can survive 100ft waves because the probability of encountering one is to low to justify the cost.
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05-08-2013, 02:18
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#101
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Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2010
Posts: 2,909
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Re: Dust Off Your Sextants! GPS Hacked!
Forget about these kids experimenting with screwing up GPS. There is another outfit who really believes the next war will be a cyberwar-- the Chinese. If somebody pees in our GPS punch, it will probably be them.
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05-08-2013, 07:24
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#102
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Switzerland
Boat: So many boats to choose from. Would prefer something that is not an AWB, and that is beachable...
Posts: 1,324
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Group9
Forget about these kids experimenting with screwing up GPS. There is another outfit who really believes the next war will be a cyberwar-- the Chinese. If somebody pees in our GPS punch, it will probably be them.
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Question is: can they pee in my GPS pinch without peeing in their own...
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05-08-2013, 12:23
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#103
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Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2010
Posts: 2,909
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Re: Dust Off Your Sextants! GPS Hacked!
Quote:
Originally Posted by K_V_B
Question is: can they pee in my GPS pinch without peeing in their own...
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Well, since they now have their own version of GPS, I would say the answer to that question would be "yes, they can."
BBC News - China launches two more Beidou navigation satellites
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05-08-2013, 20:45
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#104
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Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Switzerland
Boat: So many boats to choose from. Would prefer something that is not an AWB, and that is beachable...
Posts: 1,324
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Group9
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Can they keep me from using their GPS?
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05-08-2013, 21:18
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#105
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Registered User
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Vancouver, Wash.
Boat: no longer on my Cabo Rico 38 Sanderling
Posts: 1,810
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Re: Dust Off Your Sextants! GPS Hacked!
Quote:
Originally Posted by K_V_B
Can they keep me from using their GPS?
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No. You just need a gps receiver that receives their signal
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